


Selective Compliance

by margrave



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Food Issues, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-02
Updated: 2013-04-02
Packaged: 2017-12-07 05:57:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/745080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/margrave/pseuds/margrave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver is getting better at eating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Selective Compliance

**Author's Note:**

> I get obsessed about details, and then don't stop thinking about it until someone writes it, and if no one writes about it after a week or two I usally have to get it out of my system. So, this is about Oliver Queen and food. Or, his relationship with food and drinking, and the ways that they are problematic after 5 years of being stuck on an island, which the series sort of touches upon. But it is also about the people who cares about Oliver. 
> 
> Written in 40 mins or so, not beta'd, all mistakes are mine.

**...**

Oliver is getting better at eating.

Well, at the very least more able to differentiate between the need to eat and the pleasure of enjoying a meal. Salt, pepper and other sauces doesn’t set his taste buds into a complete meltdown as much as it did. (Raisa prepares food specifically for him; steamed and grilled fish and meat, and similarly prepared vegetables with the lightest of seasoning means he can finish half a plate instead of leaving most of it untouched. His mother smiles.). 

It is still a battle to eat regularly, and without the timer on his watch (the one that disappeared from the table he left it on, and reappeared a few hours later, the one that Felicity and Dig kept on eyeing before its short vanishing act); 6 times a day it will beep. Big meals upsets his stomach, not eating for a day or two means he can’t eat anything when confronted by dinner with his family, and then it is worried looks and confrontations he doesn’t know how to deal with.

(Laurel brings ice-cream, leaves it in the mini-fridge of his office. He doesn’t know when she does it, but there is always a fresh batch when he finishes the last one.).

Beyond food, alcohol is still a tough one.

His tolerance gone to hell compared to before, but he need to keep up the image, and that means downing a shot or two while in public, which means an hour of drinking water and making sure his hands doesn’t shake, that his stomach settles, that he doesn’t do anything stupid.

Being the owner of Verdant has its ups and downs, drinking to keep up the appearance can be difficult but it is his club, and he can chose when to drink and how to drink; he’s got a glass of water masquerading as something toxic on most nights. (He doesn’t pour his own drinks anymore. Tommy is always close by; always ready to pass him a glass of something that is water or apple juice passing as something more. They don’t talk about it, but somehow it becomes a thing, a part of his image; no one else handle Oliver Queen’s drink but his best friend. He’s rich and slightly eccentric that way.).

He lets them, doesn’t comment on any of it. He can’t explain that he got used to the hollow feeling of his stomach while on the island, that not eating provides him a level of clarity that comfort distorts. He doesn’t know how to tell the people in his life that the variety of food, the amount of food, and the smell of it all is all so overwhelming. He doesn’t know how to say that alcohol feels like it could burn through the linings of his stomach, that being slow, being mellow, being out of control on alcohol terrifies him.

There are already enough things about him that worries his family and the people in his life; taking care of him seem to ease the strain around their eyes, and in the meantime Oliver is getting better with food.

**The End.**

                                                                                        

 


End file.
